wholly surrender | He must increase, but I must decrease. -John 3:30

Well as most of you can probably tell from the one-word, all-caps, title of this post I have been sucked into the emotional/spiritual/intellectual wormhole that is the hit TV series LOST.

I generally am not a big fan of the science fiction/fantasy genre. Most of movies, books, and shows in that category seem to blow past my limited imagination and I quickly lose interest. So when LOST first came on the scene and started receiving such rave reviews I wrote it all off to the fanatical musings of the die hard Sci-Fi community. However about two seasons in my entire family started getting on the LOST bandwagon, and before to long Courtney and I found that we were becoming conversational outcasts. Everyone was discussing LOST and its infinite complexities. They were delving into the characters and events. Offering up conspiracy theories, personal observations, and pre-drawn conclusions.

There was some type collective experience going on amongst the people we loved and we were not part of it. We were missing out. We had no connection. So obviously the only solution was to start watching this infamous TV series. So we borrowed the first couple seasons on DVD from my parents, and proceeded to watch the first three seasons over the summer months via DVD and online streaming. Pretty soon we were hooked. We were drawn in. We were just as excited, confused, and enthralled as everyone else.

So as I started to watch LOST and trying to digest the story, characters, mysteries, and surprises I had an epiphany. The same thing that drew us all to this story was the same thing that made the story work. Our attraction to the show was rooted in the same humanity that made the story relatable and plausible despite its abundance of far fetched elements. This universal truth is most clearly articulated by Doctor Jack very early on in the series:

We live together, or we die alone!

Community. It is what attracts us, drives us, motivates us, strengthens us, and saves us. See if we are really really honest with ourselves none of us wants to be alone. We were made for relationships and without them our life quickly becomes frail and meaningless. Everything in our society screams for connections with others. Sports, Movies, Facebook, Twitter, State Fairs, Concerts, Community Organizations, Restaurants, Demonstrations, etc… We are constantly in search of community that will make this life worth something.

Jesus actually explained this concept many many years ago:

Matthew 22:37-39

And He said to him, ” ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ ”This is the great and foremost commandment. ”The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’

See He understood that in order for our lives to work the way they were designed we had to have relationships. In fact we have to put relationships above everything else in this world. Our relationship with God comes first, and in turn teaches us and strengthens us to have true community with everyone else in our life.

See the reason I love Dr. Jack’s statement is that there is no middle ground. There is no third option. It very simply expresses the eternal truth that if we are not living in community, we are not really living. Without relationships we are simple existing.

The scary/sad part is that we have found out that prior to the island most of these characters were simply existing, however now on the island they are actually living. Still for some reason their greatest desire is to get back to the lifestyle of simply existing.

I think we often do the same thing. As we start learning how to really live in relationships with other people that means we open ourselves up to both love and pain, and at the moments that the pain seems to overwhelm the love we want to retreat back to simply existing.

So my encouragement today is simply this: don’t retreat. Living in community no matter how much pain is always better than dieing alone. Love wins!

–Wholly Surrender

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